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York County Prison guard talks about being shot outside Manchester Township club

David Whitcomb said he was trying to defuse an argument in Manchester Township when he was shot.

By TED CZECH Daily Record/Sunday News

Updated:
03/06/2013 07:55:18 PM EST

David Whitcomb (Daily Record/Sunday News - Ted Czech)

York, PA -
The bullet that struck David Whitcomb early Saturday morning as he was outside a Manchester Township club entered his right hip area, fracturing a bone and fragmenting into small shards.

Whitcomb, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, guarded and transported prisoners for several years in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Baghdad, Iraq; and Bagram, Afghanistan. He returned home each time unscathed.

"It's crazy; it's mind-blowing," he said Monday from his room at York Hospital. "All those deployments, and I get shot in a parking lot."

Now a correctional officer at York County Prison, Whitcomb said he intervened in an argument between his brother, Derek Whitcomb, and two men at Piazza Romana, 2350 N. George St.

It turns out one of the men - the one police charged in the shooting - was an inmate on the block that Whitcomb has guarded at York County Prison, according to Northern York County Regional Police.

According to charging documents, when bouncers pushed the fight outside about 1:45 a.m., Craig A. Lewis Jr., 21, of the 200 block of Chestnut Street, York, shot Whitcomb, 26, in the abdomen.

Police said that, through their investigation, they learned Lewis "was an inmate in the York County Prison where Whitcomb is a correctional officer. In addition, the blocks worked by Whitcomb were those Lewis was housed," according to charging documents.

Lewis was sentenced to nine to 23 months in May 2010 for burglary and related offenses and was paroled in March 2011, according to court records.

After surgery, when Whitcomb met with detectives, he picked Lewis out of a photo lineup.

"But I can't say I remember Craig Lewis from my block," he said. "I see a lot of inmates on my block. I don't remember them all by faces, or names."

Still, Whitcomb's main concern is not the chance encounter, but the fact that he survived it and - from what doctors are saying - can expect a full recovery.

"From what I'm hearing, where I got shot, I'm a lucky guy," he said.

Craig A. Lewis Jr. (Submitted)

"There's a lot of things it (the bullet) could've hit in there . . . a lot of arteries it could've hit, where I would've bled out before I got here."

* * *

Whitcomb grew up in Springettsbury Township and graduated from Central York High School in 2003.

"I wanted to be a police officer, and I didn't feel very motivated for college, so I joined the military police corps in the U.S. Army Reserves," he said.

Between his deployments, he worked as a correctional officer at Lancaster County Prison. He was hired at York County Prison in 2008.

"I've been working incident-free; I'm not a trouble-starter," he said. "Never got any disciplinary action for use of force, nothing like that."

At York County Prison, he works in "echo block," an area with a 23-hour lockdown for inmates who have violated the prison's rules.

"I treat them (inmates) like people," he said. "As long as you're firm, fair and consistent in what you do, you have an easy work day."

As for the confrontation Saturday morning, "All I was really trying to do was solve the problem without force," he said.

* * *

Whitcomb said he got to Piazza Romana with his brother and a friend at 9 p.m. Friday night. They were there for a birthday party.

While he was helping set up the party, he had a beer and, through the course the night, ate dinner.

"I may have had six or seven (additional) beers and a couple shots" by the end of the night, he said.

At some point Saturday morning, he looked over at his brother, who was seated at the bar, and saw him arguing with a man with a shaved head. There was another man nearby who had a ponytail, he said.

As Whitcomb was making his way over to the argument, a bartender stopped him, put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Don't worry about it. It's being taken care of."

Just minutes later, as Whitcomb was headed to the bathroom, he saw the man with the shaved head shove his brother.

"Once I saw that, I went to help my brother," he said.

But before he could get there, bouncers escorted him outside. Once outside, he realized the bouncers also had escorted the man with the shaved head out, too.

Whitcomb said he approached the man and tried to make amends. He saw the man with the ponytail walking toward him from behind but turned back to the other man to continue talking to him.

He said he felt someone grab his shoulder from behind and say, "Do you have a problem with my boy?" and was then struck on the left temple, which knocked him unconscious.

"The next that I recall I was being helped inside the bar with a gunshot wound to the abdomen," he said. "I didn't even know I was shot; I thought I had been punched."

Lewis' family members said there is more to the story than what the official report shows. Melissa Lewis, Craig Lewis's sister, said police arrested the wrong person. She was with her brother that night, and she said there were other people in the bar with ponytails.

"I know that my brother didn't shoot him," she said.

The family also expressed concern for the safety of Craig Lewis while he is in the prison.

Whitcomb said Monday he felt better than his previous two days at the hospital and was ready to go home.

He's expecting to return to work in four weeks.

What police say

Here's what Northern York County Regional Police say happened, according to court documents:

David Whitcomb said he intervened in a confrontation between his brother, Derek Whitcomb, and two other men after one of the men bumped into him.

Derek Whitcomb said he didn't think the bump was intentional, and he and the man had a brief conversation.

As the two were talking, Craig A. Lewis Jr. interjected in the conversation and said, "Dude, you don't want a problem; you will get shot."